The Devil Inside Reviews

After hearing not so many good things about this flick, I wasn't expecting much but my kids were keen on watching an horror flick so we ended up wathing this. Personally, I always had a weak spot for the found footage genre. Indeed, I loved 'The Blair Witch Project' and I enjoyed both '[Rec]' and 'Paranormal Activity'. However, after watching this flick, I now understand the whole fatigue concerning this genre. First of all, the reason why they choose this directing style is pretty obvious. It is really cheap ass. Furthermore, it is quite usual that they use non-professional actors making the whole thing even less expensive. So, all those aspects were present here but two things were missing, originality and cleverness. Indeed, except for a few creepy moments, it was pretty tedious and really uninspired and all these flaws were even more obvious with the ending. Many criticized this ending and, indeed, the makers pushed themselves into a corner and it was indeed pretty underwhelming. To conclude, I don't think it was really awful but it was definitely pretty weak and I don't think it is really worth a look, even if you love the genre.

Before I start off I'll say this: from the beginning of the movie to just before the ending, the movie is not painful or unbearable to watch, but it's not exactly exciting or good either. So why give this a one? Well that's simple, because the ending is so bad that whatever thing or two I liked were completely obliterated from my mind. I'll get to the ending in greater detail later, lets just talk about everything before the ending first.

The movie starts off with the police getting a call from a woman saying she murdered three people. Police go and investigate, find her and then the movie jumps ahead to our time. Then the movie goes a little something like this, daughter of the woman who murdered those people finds out about her mom, goes to mom sees she's possessed, finds priests, performs unauthorized exorcisms, then things start to go bad for everyone, then the end. Sound familiar? Good, because it's the same dam thing as every other possession movie with the paranormal activity mockumentary style thrown it to make it seem "different".

The acting in this movie isn't laughable, but no one seems capable of emitting any sort of emotion. You won't be seeing any of these stars anytime soon. However, I will give credit to the woman who plays Maria Rossi(Susan Crowley). She was very convincing as someone who was possessed but, the way her scenes are filmed are more likely to provoke laughter than terror.

Next are the characters, ha characters. They're all cardboard cut-outs and I didn't care about any of them. The scares are predictable and you can see them coming a mile away(for example, after one of the exorcisms that went horribly wrong a priest is baptizing a baby. Towards the end where he has to quickly dunk the baby in the holy water, you can already tell that he's going to try to drown the baby, it was so obvious). The only actual creepy part or two are in the condensed, more enjoyable, and less time consuming two minute trailer. Other than those two creepy moments there was nothing scary about this movie, the trailer for the oogieloves frightened me more than this entire movie.

Now to the best part, the ending. This has to be one of the worst endings I have ever seen. Did the film makers run out of money? Or did they run out of ideas so that they said to themselves, "eh, this is good enough let's just end it"?? Whatever the reason is, by the time those end credits started rolling, I realized how much of an idiot I was for wasting my time. I won't give away the ending but, it ends right in the middle of the climax, who in their right mind would think that's a good idea. Were they trying to leave us with a cliffhanger? Do they know what a cliffhanger is?

83 minutes of my life wasted on this garbage, and that's with credits. People will still probably watch this due to sheer curiosity, but seriously, don't even bother. The ending is so abrupt and leaves so many things unresolved that it makes this whole movie just a complete waste of time. The best parts are in the trailer so just watch the trailer again instead of subjecting yourself to this and wasting 83 minutes of your life. Sometimes videos waiting to be found, should just be left alone.

This landfill site was even worse than The Last Exorcism. Laughable moments and one of the worst plots that I've seen on the big screen. The ending was a joke and an insult. Avoid this turkey. 2/10

Horrory o diabłach, demonach i egzorcyzmach chyba nigdy nie kojarzyły się z wysokim poziomem artystycznym. Można jednak było spodziewać się przynajmniej kilku mrożących krew w żyłach momentów, które nie pozwalały widzom usiedzieć spokojnie. Niestety, egzorcyzmy wyraźnie się zdewaluowały i stały się idealnym środkiem nasennym.

"Demony" to kolejny film z tak zwanego nurtu found footage. Tym razem oglądamy zdjęcia nakręcone przez dokumentalistę, który towarzyszy młodej kobiecie w podróży do Rzymu i Watykanu. Tam bohaterka chce się dowiedzieć czegoś więcej o egzorcyzmach. Jej zainteresowanie ma bardzo osobiste podstawy, otóż wiele lat wcześniej jej matka zabiła trzy osoby, kiedy była egzorcyzmowana. Teraz przebywa w rzymskiej klinice, gdzie ukrywana jest przed światem.

To, co zarejestrowała kamera, miało zapewnić widzom skok adrenaliny. W rzeczywistości jest raczej testem siły woli. Potrzeba bowiem sporo samozaparcia, by w trakcie seansu nie zamknąć oczu i nie zasnąć snem sprawiedliwego. Aktorzy krygują się do kamery, nieudolnie imitując zachowanie zwyczajnych ludzi wypowiadających się w dokumentach. Ta sztuczność odbiera całą przyjemność z oglądania filmu. Tworzy bowiem barierę uniemożliwiającą zawieszenie niewiary i pogrążenie się w fabule. Co więcej scenariusz oferuje wyłącznie tanie klisze, zero napięcia i zaskoczeń. Dobre sceny można policzyć na placach jednej ręki.

Problematyczna jest zresztą sama formuła found footage, z którą twórcy, mam wrażenie, sobie nie poradzili. Raz można sądzić, że podstawą były dla nich filmy dokumentalne, a raz, że programy reality show. Chwilami wiarygodność wybranej formuły odrzucają na rzecz bardziej efekciarskich ujęć, przez co widzimy na ekranie obrazy, których żaden szanujący się dokumentalisty nigdy by nie pokazał. Ten miszmasz nie pomaga, sprawia raczej wrażenie bałaganu i obnaża brak twórczej wizji.

Jedynym usprawiedliwieniem jest niewielki budżet. Film wygląda na droższy niż w rzeczywistości. Ponieważ jednak w ostatnim czasie powstało sporo podobnych produkcji, trudno o podziw. Found footage jest już niezależną gałęzią produkcji filmowej i "Demony" zamiast być czymś nadzwyczajnym, są jedynie płotką w stawie pełnym większych ryb.

"You'll burn."

A title card prefacing The Devil Inside claims that the Vatican does not want you to see this movie. It's a fictional statement present for dramatic effect, yet it wouldn't surprise me if the Vatican were against the movie due to how fucking awful it is. The Devil Inside is another attempt at a "found footage" exorcist film, arriving two years after Eli Roth's disastrous The Last Exorcism. The found footage gimmick was, of course, employed to generate a sense of immediacy and realism while we watch characters battling the demonic forces of Satan. The reality, though, is that you're more likely to wind up battling boredom throughout this half-hearted horror flick. The premise is full of potential, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired, only occasionally showing slight glimmers of promise.

In October of 1989, seemingly normal wife and mother Maria Rossi (Crowley) murdered three clergy members in her home. Reportedly, Maria is possessed by demons, and the murders took place during an attempted exorcism on her. Not sent to prison over the killings due to an insanity plea, Maria is sent to a mental hospital in Italy. Twenty years later, Maria's daughter Isabella (Andrade) and documentary filmmaker Michael (Grama) travel to Italy to try and get answers about Maria's ailment. While the church refuses to help, rogue priests Ben (Quarterman) and David (Helmuth) agree to become involved in the case.

To its credit, The Devil Inside does have its fair share of creepy moments. The opening 911 call, for instance, is insanely bone-chilling, and the exorcism scenes often have an unnerving punch to them thanks to the freedom of the picture's R rating. Furthermore, Suzan Crowley is genuinely terrific as the crazy, possessed Maria. She looks the part, and gives off a believable devil-possessed demeanour whenever she appears onscreen. These strengths aside, however, The Devil Inside is a total failure. Made on a paltry budget, the money shots are too scattershot, with most of the film concentrating on the mediocre actors as they trade stiff dialogue about church politics. It never really gets into an agreeable rhythm; it's an episodic flick, moving from one segment to the next without generating any tension or developing an engaging story. All of the characters are flat, coming across as generic fodder for whatever generic events befall them. Horror movies need a solid lead actor. Hell, even 2011's The Rite had an incredibly hammy Anthony Hopkins to keep us interested. But alas, there is no amiable protagonist here. And although The Devil Inside runs a scant 75 minutes, it's often too slow.

Also problematic is that, narratively and dramatically, The Devil Inside is nothing new. Instead of concocting an original, twist-laden story of demonic possession, director/writer William Brent Bell and co-writer Matthew Peterman trusted that the "found footage" gimmick would breathe new life into the clichéd narrative. Alas, The Last Exorcism already tried it, and that didn't work either. All the "phoney reality" stuff does is serve to make the film look technically incompetent. Moreover, the ending is atrocious. A solid ending can make or break a movie, and, unfortunately, The Devil Inside closes on a terrible note which brings the entire production down a few more notches. The ending is a lazy copout, as if the writers ran out of ideas and desperately grasped for the easiest solution. Suffice it to say, it does not work. It's also amusing that the film closes with proverbial captions elucidating further info about the film's events as if they was real...right before the lengthy end credit reel revealing who made and starred in the movie. It defeats the illusion. Worse, a caption asks us to visit a website to find out more about the "ongoing investigation" of Maria Rossi. Are you fucking serious? Talk about contempt for your audience...

As with most all found footage productions, the camerawork here is often shaky and irritatingly frenetic. This even extends to the conversational scenes - it often seems like the cameraman is suffering a fucking seizure. Plus, the realism of the documentary technique is at times thrown to the wind. When Isabella first visits her mother, for instance, Michael cannot be seen by the hospital's surveillance camera when he should be in plain sight. And there are a few instances of cuts during talking, as if to imply that two cameramen were present. One must wonder how much better off the film might have been without the found footage approach altogether. If it was shot in a more traditional style, The Devil Inside could have been a halfway decent horror movie since we would have at least been able to see what's happening. What we have instead is a lot of bad lighting, grainy close-ups, and shaky framing. Ho hum.

3.8/10